FAIRFIELD'S AUCTION by Betty Jean Craige
If you have committed a murder or are planning to commit
one, keep the parrot out of hearing distance. In Fairfield's Auction, Doolittle, the African Grey Parrot,
unintentionally helps identify the murderer.
Fairfield's
Auction, released by Black Opal Books in February of 2016, is the
second novel in my Witherston Murder Mystery trilogy set in the fictive town of
Witherston in the north Georgia mountains. The first, which came out in
November of 2014, is Downstream. The
third, Dam Witherston, will be out in
2017. All of them illustrate the idea expressed by John Muir in 1869 that
"when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the universe."
Ever since I moved to Georgia in 1973 I have been enchanted
with the north Georgia mountains, the culture and crafts of the people there,
and the thousand year history of the Cherokee civilization—and not enchanted
with the north Georgia poultry industry. When I've followed a 4,000-chicken
truck up the highway I've dreamed of liberating those poor caged chickens who
are condemned to stay alive till they get to the processing plant and meet
their maker. So in Fairfield's Auction
I liberated an 18-wheeler of its "broilers." (The chickens are called
"broilers" because that is their destiny.)
The parrot meets the chickens...and the mystery yields its
first clue.
The predominant theme of Fairfield's
Auction is a question: Who rightfully
owns the relics of the past? The
novel begins with an auction of Cherokee artifacts to the highest bidders,
wealthy non-Cherokees. The murders begin shortly thereafter.
A major secondary theme is the importance of empathy for individuals unlike oneself, human and otherwise. So the animals who populate Witherston have names. Besides
Doolittle the parrot, there are six chickens named Henny Penny, Mother Hen,
Moonshine, Sunshine, Feather Jo, and Feather Jean, two nanny goats named Grass
and Weed, a billy goat named Vincent Van Goat, a donkey named Sassyass, a mule
named Franny, five dogs named Muddy, Gandhi, Swift, Mighty, and Sequoyah, a cat
named Barack Obama, and a pig named Betty Pig. How can we not have empathy for
animals who have names?
My novel is both serious and funny. With characters who are
serious and funny and smart. And it is a real mystery, which the reader can
figure out by paying attention to the narrative, the online newspaper, the text
messages, the email messages, the songs, the maps, the wills, and the ransom
note. That's how we all figure things out in today's world, from multiple
sources of information.
All the reader has to do is remember that everything is
hitched to everything else, one way or another.
Dr. Betty Jean Craige has
published books in the fields of Spanish poetry, modern literature, history of
ideas, politics, ecology, and art. She
is a scholar, a translator, a teacher, and a novelist. http://www.bettyjeancraige.com/
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